Thursday, January 29, 2009

I need to start by saying that Randall and I clearly agree on one thing: Carlos Mencia sucks. He sucks donkey balls, in fact. He steals jokes like nobody's business. He pretends he's Mexican and not half-German half-Honduran. And mostly importantly, he's criminally unfunny. Unlike xkcd, I'm not aware of any good stuff at all that's come out of Mind of Mencia (though, to be fair, unlike xkcd, my hatred has kept me from trying to consume more of his work). So...yeah. SUCKS.

Anyway, I think this comic probably breaks the streak of "comics randall munroe draws that make me want to punch people in the face." That's not to say I like it, just that it doesn't fill me with rage. So...good job? I don't know. The set up line seemed to set up a more intelligent joke, and then the punchline reveals that it's not going to say anything special about science or space elevators or the wonderfully quotable Arthur C Clarke. It's just "Carlos Mencia Isn't Funny." Which is all well and good on its own, but even more so than the last comic this feels outdated. Wikipedia tells me that Mind of Mencia has already ended so I wonder why now we get a joke making fun of it. There's still unfunny stuff out there (for example, Will Ferrell is still making movies and Dane Cook is still talking) but I think of Carlos Mencia as being so 2005.

Lastly, for a humorist to make jokes about other humorists being bad seems like a really tricky line to walk. Who among the xkcd haters out there didn't change the last panel so that it suggested disseminating xkcd to stop laughter? I know I did. And Randall has been known to commit the occasional act of unrepentant plagiarism too.

Credit where it's due: I like the art in this comic. Could have used some in the second panel but whatever. Stolen-from-the-forums discussion question: Is the art supposed to be (yet another) tribute to Calvin and Hobbes? I say...no. But maybe you disagree?

PS- Randy has a new blog post up but it's so damn boring it took me three tries to read it all and I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Posted by
Carl

21 comments:

glad to see i wasn't the only person to think that this joke was, oh, three years too late. mencia sucked then and sucks now, but he's not even on the radar anymore. yet another pitiful showing on randall's behalf.

also, acknowledging the idiots who populate the forums validates their questions here. if we ignore them, maybe they'll just go away.

OK, I just now thought it's so close to ironic how this comic reflects Calvin and Hobbes while at the same time dissing Carlos Menica. Granted, it's not really, because Randall isn't criticizing Mencia for copying.

Okay Carl I had my comment for this post all ready in my head: "You could totally replace 'Mind of Mencia' with 'xkcd'" BUT DAMN I AM NOT AS ORIGINAL AS I'D THOUGHT

Anyway, yeah, I kind of felt this was Calvin&Hobbes-y, but that might just be because I'm still kinda sputtering over his attempts to be The Next Bill Watterson... just like he'd referenced any sort of artificially intelligent machine I'd probably immediately think of The Terminator.

The trees are definitely nice. BUT WHY DOES ONLY THE FAT ONE REFLECT EHHHH

The art is very nice, almost Buttercupfestivalian. (May I rant about Buttercup Festival for a short while? OK thanks I'ma do it anyway. It's one of those comics that is occasionally astoundingly good - in fact, my favourite individual comic on the entire internets is a Buttercup Festival comic - but all these gems are interspersed by, well, dreck. Dreck with good art, but still, it's mostly just pictures of trees. You should all still read it though! I know Randall does!)

Man I don't want to bad-mouth XKCD today because the duckling loop made me laugh out loud. Umm... if you hate Calvin and Hobbes piggybackers, might I direct your rage towards The Invisible Life of Poet? It's an absurdly bad comic, the worst I've read (and I've read Ctrl-Alt-Del and Dominic Deegan) but get this - it has the nerve to compare itself to Calvin and Hobbes. And every strip is either 'haha religious people suck look at this religious person and how much s/he sucks' or 'haha athletes suck look at this athlete and how much s/he sucks'. It makes me spew bile.

Oh dear God in Heaven, I just wandered over to the xkcd forums to see what they had to say about this comic. I haven't read the forums much before, and I guess I expected them to be less horrible. Exhibit A:

"To the Mencia haters:you guys are nerds and need to lighten up."

Nerds? Nerds. Damn.

I suppose it's my fault for thinking that it's possible for something to be Popular On The Internet without drawing in the mouth-breathers, but I expected better from such an intelligent (or at least intermittently intelligent) comic.

While I enjoyed the art in the first panel, this comic disappointed me. Strange because the one Carl actually doesn't mind I think isn't very good at all and other ones I liked Carl thinks are god awful. Oh well it just goes to show different people have different preferred styles of humor.

I actually thought this one was pretty funny. I ran myself on over to Comedy Central and it seems that although Mind of Mencia isn't taping any new episodes, they are playing in reruns. (I thought I saw the episodes on the TV Guide). Anyway, just thought I would point out that fact.

I think the most disturbing thing about this comic was the alt text. What is up with that? Took a relatively funny joke (compared to the last months worth or whatnot) and then pointed to an obscure theoretical competitor to the space elevator, when the space elevator really had little to do with the joke to begin with? I don't get it... I should, I guess, realize that Monroe is trying to point out how up on obscure technology theory he is, but still.

Finally, I am totally with you on the blog post, it was the king of boring. Yes Monroe, I get it, you are a math god. You can perform high school level physics equations. This wasn't even though provoking. I am starting to think he puts out these blog posts just to laugh at how many comments he gets about his stupid blog posts! Like saying, "Here sheepy sheepy sheepy!"

I refuse to believe anybody actually likes this. It's a weak version of a burn (it's an insult, it's not even a joke) that was relevant about a year ago, the artistic style of the background as well as the whole flow of the comic in general is very similar to a screamingly unfunny Calvin and Hobbes, and the idea of a comedian writer taking pot shots at other comedians just doesn't sit right with me, especially in such an uninspired way, no matter how much I dislike the target.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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